Shall we start the morning with fact before we head into the realms of fiction? Probably a good idea.
The only such fact this morning is that Jack Wilshere has signed professional terms with the club. He’s just turned 17 and we’re all hoping he has a very good year. In the official announcement Arsene Wenger said:
We are delighted that Jack has signed a professional contract with us. Jack is a player with great potential, with an ability to find the final ball and also score goals. We have already seen Jack’s qualities in both his first team performances and in training on a regular basis, and we look forward to Jack being an important part of our first team for years to come
He’s certainly the most exciting English prospect that the club has produced for a long time. Yes, we’ve brought through young players like Cesc and Clichy but we did a bit of pinching with them. Jack is 100% Arsenal having joined the club at 9 years of age.
I don’t need to tell you how impressive he’s been in the games we’ve seen him play. It’s just a shame that the Carling Cup is over for this year because we probably won’t see that much of him. All the same, he’s been fairly regular on the bench as a 16 year old trainee. Perhaps that’s a combination of his talent and our lack of resources but maybe now that he’s turned pro will see the boss more willing to use him. Anyway, congrats to Jack and may he have a long and successful career at The Arsenal.
Right, now that the transfer window is well and truly upon us the rumours are flying around the place. The Sun this morning claims we’re after Portsmouth’s Niko Kranjcar. At the rate players are leaving, or rumoured to be leaving, Portsmouth poor old Tony will have to come out of retirement to make up the XI on a Saturday. It seems a reasonable if rather unimaginative story.
Now, here’s some rumour provided by me. Well, provided by somebody else who is giving it in good faith but I can’t say this is stone-cold fact. This person has been told that we have our eye on two players from Premier League clubs.
Firstly, Fulham’s Jimmy Bullard. If I’m not mistaken we were linked with him last January but nothing happened. Currently he’s in the middle of a contract ‘dispute’ with the Cottagers, having asked for a very, very large salary to stay at the club. Is it a tactic to price himself out of Fulham knowing there’s someone else willing to take him on? We’ll see.
Secondly, the centre-half we’re looking at is Aston Villa’s Martin Laursen. This could be a bit of a merry-go-around, actually. Rumours of our interest in Matthew Upson are wide of the mark, it seems he could be on his way to Villa freeing up Laursen to move our way. However, it would surprise me, considering the league table, if Villa were to sell to us. He’s been a hugely important player for them in recent times. He had a horrendous injury record when he first joined but I thought I heard a commentator say he had been ever-present for something like 16 months. Until he missed the game against us through injury.
Anyway, those are, I have to stress, just rumours. As I said, given to me in good faith and I pass along the information to you in the same way. The reality is that Arsenal, perhaps more than any other club in the history of football, play their cards incredibly close to their chest when it comes to transfers so you might find that bits of information that are leaked out are designed to throw you off the scent altogether.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens. I just thought it was interesting. Beyond that there appears to be be nothing new in terms of Andrei Arshavin (beyond some (t)wit re-using last summer’s picture of Arsene have his arse shaved) and rumours that Kolo Toure has cleared out his locker and said his goodbyes remain unsubstantiated at this point.
So that’s that. We’ll possibly have some more fact and probably a lot more fiction tomorrow. Until then.
